


Building Up a Home

by Solarcat



Category: due South
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solarcat/pseuds/Solarcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, an essay on the character arcs of Fraser and RayK in Due South S3 & S4. With heavy emphasis on how they are completely MFEO and the OTP of my heart. <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Building Up a Home

**Author's Note:**

> To preface: This entire thing began as me rambling at Acadia on gchat like, a couple of years ago. I am finally getting around to editing it into something readable for the general population, but I may miss something, so if there’s something weird in here, it’s probably a gchat artifact. There is a lot of capslock, and a lot of quotes that may not be 100% accurate, because I pulled most of them from memory. Also, this will require familiarity with the show to really follow, so if you are looking to be pimped into Due South, this is NOT the meta you are looking for! I did try to include enough background/context so that if you haven't seen it in a while you won't be completely lost, though. :)

First, we need a little bit of background into S1 and S2. 

We open with Benton Fraser. In the beginning of the show, he's not only super-mountie, but basically living in his dad's footsteps, shadow, and everything else. Then his dad dies, he discovers his dad isn't as perfect as he thought he was at his job (though I believe Fraser NEVER had any illusions that he was anything even REMOTELY like a good FATHER). And he's essentially kicked out of Canada and can't really go back. So that's where we have him. His whole life has just been ripped away, and instead of patrolling thousands of miles of wilderness, he's now stuck in a tiny back office/storage room in Chicago.

Throughout S1 and S2, Fraser REBUILDS. He spends those seasons learning his new home, building a family (the cops at the 2-7, the Vecchio family, his neighbors), and building a new life.

Now, by the end of those two seasons, as we can see by the fact that S3 opens with Fraser in Canada, he's able to go "home", but he's not staying. He's going back to the life he built for himself, which is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (aside from the crazy and the law enforcement) than everything he was raised to. See, at this point Fraser would probably consider himself totally mature and whatever, but in a way he's still running from his whole past.

But his past, and the shadow of his father's legacy, is QUITE LITERALLY haunting him. Dead Bob is the literal representation of everything Fraser is dealing with with regard to living up to his dad's reputation, etc. He's running, but he's still got that lingering need to PROVE himself to the father who never seemed to have any time for him (until after he was dead, anyway).

So then we have _Burning Down the House_ , which is the greatest title ever.

In _Burning Down the House_ , we open with Vecchio leaving. Now, my interpretation (which you may or may not share) is that Ray Vecchio is pretty much straight. Benton Fraser, I think we can all agree, is at least halfway bent (ha ha, _puns_ ). This is more on a shipping line than anything else, but the whole "As a friend?" conversation was, in some ways, a final confirmation NOT ONLY that they are and will continue to be friends, but that Vecchio will not ever be MORE than that for Fraser. So there's my interpretation on the shipping front.

On the character arc front, though, we have a mirroring of the beginning of the first season. _Burning Down the House_ is quite literal--the "house" Fraser has built for himself for two seasons goes up in often-literal flames within one episode.

He loses Ray Vecchio. He loses his apartment and all the neighbors he's befriended (since they all had to find new places to live, as Fraser states). He loses the Vecchio home. He even loses Vecchio's car.

But, and this is the hugely important, critical and crucial _but_ , here, HE GETS RAY KOWALSKI. Now, in the first episode he doesn't even know Ray's NAME, not for real, but IMHO it's basically love at first sight. Fraser gets distracted trying to prove RayK isn't Vecchio, but that really doesn't change things. And then Ray goes and TAKES a bullet for Fraser (which is a very interesting mirroring, since Vecchio at one point SHOT Fraser), and from that point there's sort of instantaneous synchronicity.

By the end of the episode, Fraser finds out the deal with Ray, and he also gets the note from Vecchio. That note, really, is the final closure for Fraser (at least until he sees Vecchio at the end of S4). The dialogue at that point is INSANELY slashy--Ray sees this picture of Fraser and this other guy, clearly pretty close, and says, "Is that something I need to worry about?", and Fraser puts the picture away, and says no. And then he almost IMMEDIATELY asks Ray out to dinner, and Ray does his adorable surprised/pleased/shy smile and accepts. THAT RIGHT THERE is the get-together.

NOW. _Eclipse_. We tore down Fraser's life and wiped the slate a bit in _Burning Down the House_ , and with _Eclipse_ we REALLY introduce RayK. We see his apartment, we find out he likes Smarties in his coffee, and we find out what HE'S running from.

Ray's got just as much baggage in his past as Fraser, in a lot of ways. He's got stuff he's living up to and trying to live down. The important things in the episode are that Fraser learns who Ray really is. And not just his real name, but a lot of who Ray, ESSENTIALLY, is. Ray is constantly trying to escape being a scared little kid who pissed his pants when faced with a Bad Guy. He's constantly trying to be the savior that Stella THOUGHT he was. Just like Fraser, he's living in the past. And, interestingly, there are some parallels between the relationship of Fraser to his father, and RayK to Vecchio. Or, perhaps not parallels exactly, but interesting points to consider.

In Fraser and RayK, we have two guys who are RUNNING AWAY FROM THEMSELVES. Fraser is running away from his past and his home in Canada (that he COULD go back to, remember--after Vecchio's gone, and his whole life has been torn down, WHAT IS KEEPING FRASER IN CHICAGO?) and RayK is running away from HIS home and literally his whole life (though he's bad at that). RayK has taken on another man's name because he wants to escape from the mess he thinks he's made of his own life. The divorce from Stella was his _Burning Down the House_ , and then in _Eclipse_ you have basically his whole past being ripped out from under him.

The scene at the end, with the open grave? The sunlight slowly comes back, and you have Ray lying there in the grave, with Fraser's dreamcatcher on his chest, facing the fact that he was WRONG about so much of what he believed; that this whole thing that had haunted him was NOTHING. And then you have Fraser LITERALLY pull Ray out of the grave, and into a whole new life. This is when RayK starts his own rebuilding.

Fraser takes a little longer.

(Though of course Ray still has to deal with his Stella-issues, but that DOES happen, so there you go.)

There's some REALLY interesting stuff to say about Fraser here, too, because right at the beginning of S3, he starts wearing the red uniform. If you watch, you'll see that in S1 and S2, he wore the brown uniform quite a lot, WAY more than he does in S3 and S4. Now, there was some discussion of this at a convention (it was either MJ or BP, but I forget which), where several people made the (quite good) argument that he's doing that to distract people from the fact that RayK is definitely Not Vecchio. But I think there's another interpretation, too. Fraser is hiding himself behind The Uniform just as much as he's hiding RayK.

In the red uniform, he's Super Mountie. He can be Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP, and doesn't have to try to deal with being Ben Fraser, a guy who has issues and emotions and isn't always logical and perfect all the time. In the face of losing everything, he retreats into a facsimile of his early S1 self, but it's not the same at all. I think during S1, that's really who Fraser thought he was. That WAS his identity. NOW, though, he knows it's a mask. He's AWARE that he's basically play-acting.

The really, truly interesting thing, and THIS is why the fight in _Mountie on the Bounty_ is important, because it's the most obvious example, is that RayK can ALWAYS get to the guy underneath the mask. Fraser's whole act doesn't work on him, and he gets more and more stressed out that Fraser keeps TRYING to make it work on him.

BUT, before we really get to _MotB_ , we need to talk about _Asylum_. It's really interesting that this episode comes right before _MotB_ , because it's another critical turning point in their relationship. When Ray gets into huge, massive, OH SHIT I'M FUCKED trouble, he runs STRAIGHT TO FRASER. Ray's a cop. He knows that running looks bad. But he runs, and he runs to the consulate because he TRUSTS that Fraser will not only believe him, but help him. And in return, Fraser stretches, bends, twists and arm-wrestles the law to it's absolute limits, FOR RAY. He goes to talk to mob bosses, pisses off most of Chicago law enforcement, STEALS casefiles, and actually DOES hide Ray from the police even OUTSIDE the consulate, where technically he was on American soil and, if Fraser really WAS actually the Super Mountie he pretends to be, should have been turned over to the police.

Then you get that VERY interesting "friends" conversation at the consulate, where Ray is trying to get out and Dief stops him, and then you have Fraser declaring that he's going to help, and that Ray needs to trust him because they're friends. I believe, if my memory is accurate, that this is where you get the "Was that hard to say?" "Not in the least." exchange, which if you listen to the TONE they're using, sounds very much like Fraser said "I love you" instead.

With _Asylum_ , we see that RayK trusts Fraser implicitly; with his life, and his safety, and his freedom. He hands Fraser the keys to his EVERYTHING and says, Okay, I trust you, you drive.

THEN we get _Mountie on the Bounty_. And THIS is why the fight is SO, SO important. Ray trusts Fraser with everything. But Fraser, Fraser is a GIANT BALL OF TRUST ISSUES.

The fight, IN THE SHOW, with no slash goggles needed, is all about trust. Ray says, I trust you, do you trust me? And Fraser says, UM. WELL. *sideways glance* because Fraser is CLINGING to that image of perfection. To trust Ray, to do what Ray says and go with Ray's instincts, would be to admit that he ISN'T RIGHT ALL THE TIME. And that's a HUGE crack in the Super Mountie mask.

And basically, Fraser is almost willing to give up EVERYTHING to keep that mask in place. You can SEE, in the show, how much it's actually killing them to break up. But the relationship isn't reciprocal, and that's killing them too. If you take "partnership" and make it "relationship", the SAME ISSUES APPLY. We've all SEEN couples have these exact same fucking issues. They have to find a way to make the trust a two-way street, or the partner/relationship won't survive.

It's interesting, too, because EVERYONE ELSE CAN ALSO SEE IT. The cops are giving them the same wide berth you give to a friend who's having a fight with their S.O. It's that respectful distance of knowing that what they're talking about is PERSONAL. Their "alternatives" are also telling. Ray is going to run back to being Ray Kowalski, which he was running AWAY from in the first place, and Fraser is going to go back to Canada, to the CAPITOL, which is basically a huge merit badge in Super Mountie-land.

They've both been building something TOGETHER for the whole season--they're rebuilding their separate lives, but they're doing it as a UNIT. As Ray says, they're a duet. You set 'em up, he knocks 'em down. (Which, note, Ray talks about their relationship like that ALL THE TIME. There's red ships and green ships but there's no ships like partnerships. ETC.)

What _MotB_ sets up is, if they abandon this thing, they abandon everything they've built. They'd go RIGHT BACK to where they were before they met, but they'd be even more unhappy about it.

So _MotB_ is basically their "We're breaking up, but how about we fuck one last time?" They get this case, and they agree to work it together, One Last Time. And the whole time there's this breakup looming, and both of them are facing that, and their relationship with each other, as well as the actual case in front of them.

DURING the case, we see a LOT about how good they are for each other. Note how ALL Fraser has to do to convince Ray to go along with the "let's drive all night to the Sault St. Marie shipyards to go on a fucking crazy mission to stop some pirates" is to tell him the story of the Robert Mackenzie. Ray GETS IT. Fraser doesn't have to explain beyond that.

And of course we have Dead Bob, around the same time, explaining that "Partnership is like a marriage, son," which is actually some of the best advice he gives. It's all about give and take, and Fraser basically needs to wake up and realize that it's been all take and no give, from him.

SO. They're on this crazy adventure, they get on the boat, yay, then of course Ray gets caught snooping and they get caught in the boat as it starts to sink. Fraser is still in his In Control, SuperMountie mode, here. He's taking control, he gets Ray loose and starts to guide them through the ship, and then we have that long, long tunnel full of water, and Ray Kowalski who doesn't know how to swim.

Everyone focuses on the buddy breathing here, because YES IT IS AWESOME. But I think it's only PART of the awesome. Because you have Fraser, who is already in this situation where he's losing Ray, and then he might actually LOSE RAY. Ray could, in fact, have DIED right there. So do I think the buddy breathing was also totally a kiss? Hell yes I do. He's trying to keep Ray alive, and he's trying to keep Ray WITH HIM, all at the same time.

And then, of course, you have the scene when they surface, and Ray asks if it changes anything. You could interpret that in a lot of ways, but I kind of like the interpretation that Ray's defensiveness is because he WANTS it to change things but doesn't want to admit that he wants it to change things in case Fraser doesn't want things to change. And I like the interpretation that Fraser MISinterprets Ray. No, it doesn't change anything. No, you're still breaking up with me. And Fraser LOSES HIS TEMPER. He actually SNAPS at Ray, calls him "Mister Instinct", and they bicker each other quickly into awkward silence. Fraser doesn't want to lose Ray, but he's STILL not quite willing to take off the mask, even though it's cracking under the strain. 

For all that, though, Ray STILL trusts Fraser to strap a fire extinguisher to his back and FLY them out of the ship, and then to stay with him and help him swim all the way to the pirate ship. He STILL trusts.

The breaking point for Fraser is in the submarine.

They manage to find out what's going on, they work together to get off the ship, and then they're in the sub. Not only do you have the fantastically close quarters, but you have Ray at the end of his rope. You can hear it in his voice during the scene. It's the final straw, the last ultimatum. Ray hasn't entirely given up on Fraser yet, but you can tell that he's there.

He tells Fraser to "go that way", because he has a feeling, and you can palpably FEEL Fraser, through the screen, STRAINING between his desire to keep the mask in place and learning to trust Ray back. Fraser is tense where Ray is nearly wrung out. The whole thing is basically hanging by a thread at that point, and if Fraser had turned the other way, that would have been it. It would have been over.

But he doesn't. It takes him until the very last possible second and a good deal of prodding from Dead Bob (which is a bit ironic), but finally, FINALLY, Fraser says, "That way?" and Ray confirms it, and there's both a literal and a metaphorical turning point. After that, for the rest of the episode, they are IN SYNC. All of a sudden they're back on form, working together perfectly. Right down to the point that at the end, you have them separated, on the opposite sides of the cargo area, only BARELY able to communicate through silent gestures, and yet STILL they know each other and can read each other SO WELL that Ray can throw Fraser his gun at exactly the right moment.

And then, of course, you have their time on the Bounty replica, during which there are vague sort-of passes at heterosexuality in the whole montage scene, but ultimately, you have Fraser and RayK standing hip-and-shoulder, smiling together in the sunlight. Which, you'll note, is in direct contrast to how they started their breakup — standing by the water, at night, punching each other.

So now we’re on to S4, where Interesting Things happen!

After _Mountie on the Bounty_ , Fraser and RayK are TOGETHER. I say this completely independent of whether you think they're having sex at that point or not. The togetherness is not dependent on sex. They're a UNIT. They're FraserandRay.  
Then you hit S4, where the past rears its head and they have to face it.

 _The Ladies' Man_ is Ray's episode for this. He's gotta deal with his own past mistakes, as well as people he looked up to who ended up not deserving the admiration he gave them. And, perhaps most importantly, he goes against EVERYONE IN THE DEPARTMENT. Except, of course, you have Fraser there, who will, at this point, stand with Ray on anything. They've finally established that trust, so when Ray says This Isn't Right, Fraser says, Okay. I trust you. You say this isn't right, then it isn't right.

Ray clears up a little more of the Mess of Ray Kowalski, and we see that partnership with Fraser, that bolsters him even when yet another piece of his old foundation is torn away. He can depend on the NEW foundation, the one they built together in S3.

Fraser gets a couple of episodes, himself. First off, we have _Odds_ , which I think is a FANTASTIC episode in terms of Fraser's characterization as well as showing what he and Ray will do for each other. IMHO, Odds stands in opposition to _Victoria’s Secret_. This time, though, Fraser doesn't fall for the bluff, as it were. You THINK maybe he is, and I believe RAY is even a little worried, because if he knows Fraser's past he knows about Victoria and he knows that Fraser is clearly an idiot sometimes. But with _Odds_ you have Fraser bluffing right back, sticking with Ray instead of with the girl. (And, of course, you get Ray falling through the skylight which is, I think, a particular highlight to the whole affair. As well as Fraser in a tux. UNF.)

And then at the end they're betting air, which is utterly fantastic. Because how, exactly, does one pay back AIR that one owes someone else? RIGHT.

And then. And then. We dig back EVEN further into Fraser's past, because in _Hunting Season_ you have Maggie.

What Maggie brings up is Fraser's whole past. His family, his father, his mother. Fraser's mother isn't someone we hear about very often at ALL, but she's SO essential to the end of the show, so Hunting Season is pretty much perfectly placed, leading as it does into the 2-part _Call of the Wild_.

An interesting point is that Maggie can ALSO see Dead Bob. This is, in fact, the first time someone who did not already seem rather senile has seen, heard, or spoken to Dead Bob besides Fraser. Now, you can take that as the show saying, Look, Fraser hasn't just been crazy this whole time! Dead Bob is real! or you can take the metaphor a little further and realize that Bob Fraser is a ghost that's haunting BOTH Fraser and Maggie's pasts.

So Fraser has to confront his past, but you also get the insanely hopeful side of things, where Fraser's whole family ISN'T dead. He has a sister, he has a real, actual CONNECTION. And that, I think, is what triggers the homesickness that we see in the beginning of _Call of the Wild_.

And, of course, that homesickness triggers Ray, as well. WHICH WE WILL GET TO.

 _Call of the Wild_ is ostensibly about Fraser finally killing off the last of his demons--he finishes the job his father started, catching Muldoon and avenging his mother. Fraser, at last, has surpassed his father's legacy, but he's also made peace with it. He can realize that his father truly, deeply loved his mother, and that her death was something his father never got over, and that his father wasn't SuperMountie, he was just a man, just a flawed PERSON like everyone else.

But it's also, and this is especially critical when you're talking about slash and Due South, about Ray Kowalski finding Ray Kowalski.

When Ray Vecchio comes back, RayK is immediately tossed out of an identity and a place in life that he'd become comfortable with. And here we come back to the very beginning of S3, with that "Is that something I need to worry about?" Suddenly, Vecchio _is something RayK needs to worry about_.

It obviously doesn't help that Vecchio is happy to immediately step back into his old life, and to immediately thrust RayK OUT of his NEW life. He even takes "Ray" from him--as Walsh decides (and you can SEE what it does to RayK), "He gets to be Ray Vecchio", because he WAS, of course, Ray Vecchio. And then RayK asks something like, "Then who am I?" The answer Walsh gives is that he can be Stanley Kowalski, but he's NOT Stanley Kowalski, or he doesn't feel like Stanley Kowalski.

The two-episode arc is as much about RayK figuring out who he is now as it is about Fraser finally overcoming his past - that “Who am I?” is the pivotal question for RayK in the finale.

The first thing he finds, at least, is some assurance that Fraser is still there. You can TELL, from the way he acts and the way he asks if he and Fraser are still partners, that he's sort of terrified that now that Fraser has Vecchio, the original, REAL Vecchio, back, that he'll immediately drop Ray and go back to working with Vecchio. It's all over his body language and his voice. And it's clear that Fraser sort of GETS that, because he doesn't say, "Of course we are, Ray!", he says, "If you'll have me."

Basically Fraser is confirming that, if Ray is still in this thing, so is he. He knows that Ray could, now, go back to his old life. He could go back to being Ray Kowalski, go back to his old precinct. Ray could choose to leave. He's free of his obligation to fill the role as Fraser's partner--now it's all a matter of choice, and with that "If you'll have me," they're choosing each other, no strings attached. No need to pretend that RayK is the Vecchio Fraser had been hanging out with so long. Ray Kowalski, as himself, under no obligation, goes off on a crazy mission to stop a militia, because Fraser is going and that means he is too.

And then you have their whole time in Canada, by themselves, with limited supplies, and Fraser TAKES CARE of Ray, even though he desperately wants to catch Muldoon, and even though Ray is, truly, a hindrance. Dead Bob's observation that Fraser might have to "leave the Yank" should be noted, not necessarily because of the scene it occurs in, but because of how CotW ends. Fraser _isn’t_ leaving Ray, he _won’t_ leave Ray, and Ray isn’t going anywhere either.

The episode also features what I think is maybe the most telling character moment for Ray, here, which is his conversation with Thatcher as they’re all staked out and waiting for Muldoon to show up.

_”You ever feel like you don't know who you are? Like if you weren't around somebody or that somebody wasn't around you, that you wouldn't be you. Or at least not the you that you think you are. You know, you ever feel like that?”_

Basically, here we have Ray talking out loud, but working through the realization that his SELF is now built around Fraser. He can't go back to being “Stanley Kowalski”, because he isn't. He's part of FraserandRay.

The beginning of S3 is _Burning Down the House_ , literally and figuratively. Everybody's "homes" are taken away; their LIVES are taken away. At the end of S4, you have Fraser reclaiming his old HOME as a new PERSON — he’s no longer just “Bob Fraser's son” or “Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP,” SuperMountie extraordinaire. He's FREE of that, just like he's free of the lingering ghost of his father. And at the end of S4 you have Ray, who ran away from his whole identity, realizing that his "home" isn't a city or a precinct or a name, but a PERSON. He's not running anymore when he "runs off" to Canada with Fraser at the end.

Basically, at the end of the show, they take what they've built together, they take FraserandRay, and they leave with it. 

(Whether or not they leave with it permanently is open to fannish interpretation, obviously, but there you have it.)


End file.
